


The inevitability of history

by redsnake05



Category: Voynich Manuscript (Book)
Genre: Alternate History, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 13:26:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17044562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redsnake05/pseuds/redsnake05
Summary: It is difficult to overestimate the effect that Leandra da Valmadrera had on the Renaissance, and hence on the development of European thought and later cultural, economic and social movements that enveloped our globe.An alternate history, where science unfolds on its predictable lines, and, looking back, we see Leandra da Valmadrera and her works as the starting point for the flourishing society we have now.





	The inevitability of history

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MadameHardy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameHardy/gifts).



> We live in a world which expresses the ideas of Leonardo da Vinci ideas more fully than captured in his work - but what if we lived in one that captured instead the the ideas of the Voynich manuscript, and da Vinci was the curiosity? I hope I've captured a sense of how the world might be different, but still inevitable, if the sciences of botany, fluid dynamics and celestial mechanics had been pursued as the governing powers of scientific thought. I hope you like it.

_"It is difficult to overestimate the effect that Leandra da Valmadrera had on the Renaissance, and hence on the development of European thought and later cultural, economic and social movements that enveloped our globe. Her contributions, across music, literature, botany, invention, painting, sculpture, mathematics, cartography, navigation, engineering, architecture, science, medicine, geology and economics, must make her the original exemplar of the Renaissance Human._

_It is important to remember, however, that she, no matter how extraordinary, is located in the context of a world full of curiosity, of change, and unquenchable enthusiasm for knowledge and understanding. To understand the works and thoughts of Leandra da Valmadrera is to illuminate us all, in the smooth, cyclical flow of universal energy."_

Vasilia sighed. Why must they read about this old stuff in class, alongside their more practical lessons? She was to be an engineer, not a anthropologist! Vasilia had never been much of a historian, preferring instead to focus on technology and science. There was something about hydraulics, fluid dynamics, and geoengineering that spoke to her far more than these dry texts, even if - she checked the introduction again - Leandra da Valmadrera was the original polymath who kicked off the Renaissance. The class was necessary for her course, however, and she supposed if the university thought a History of Thought class was needed for engineers, she would just have to knuckle under. 

Vasilia flicked through the introduction and considered the rest of the book. She paused on some pictures. These ideas didn't seem revolutionary, just uncannily prescient, but, she supposed, that was the point. Her teacher had said that to understand the paths of history, from the modest irrigation projects and piping systems of the early 1400s to the complexities of botanistructural engineering, photoelectrical generation, hydroportation and xylothermation, was to understand ourselves, but Vasilia wasn't sure she saw the connections. 

She got up from her desk and wandered out into the kitchen, pressing her fingers to the sensor pad that altered the ionic ratio in the screen of plants above the bench, causing them to glow as the water inside the plants slowly found a new equilibrium. She considered the soft radiance of the bioengineered lights, and wondered how else people might have imagined electricity to work, if not by the phenomenal power of photoelectrics? How was energy stored and distributed, if not via the natural reservoirs of the specific heat capacity of water and its attendant responses to pressure and force? The genetic and bionic engineering of living things hadn't really started in earnest till much later than da Valmadrera's works, but the roots, so to speak, were apparently there. 

Vasilia supposed she'd know more if she actually read the book, but she'd never been particularly interested in questioning the inevitable facts of how physics and mathematics worked. Science seemed to her to work in a perfectly reasonable way, and she saw no need to interrogate it further, just to put it to use with greater precision. She smiled as she thought of some of her more experimental peers, and their enthusiasm for reductionist models. They seemed so niche and specialised, and not particularly useful for understanding a whole system. There might be times, she thought doubtfully, when understanding small parts and then expecting them to work together might be the best way, but science was predicated on a model of synthesis and holistic evaluation. She was happy with that. 

Dragging her mind back to the book, she thought of the most famous picture, one she'd seen while flipping through, on page 75v of da Valmadrera's most seminal manuscript. How could the power of the water towers and solar collectors not be obvious to everyone? Where else could human development have led? The image of those towers, and the rays collected above them, was iconic for human thought. It spoke to the passive power of the universe, and the smooth, seamless way people integrated into it, represented by the engineers below the towers. She rather supposed da Valmadrera had pictured the engineers naked to represent the porous nature of human skin, and hence the endless, cyclic flows of energy. Certainly, she would not want to climb naked into an engineering plant herself, but she supposed that philosophers could be forgiven for prioritising elegance of thought ahead of health and safety. Some of the new wetsuits, utilising the latest research on cephalopods and the intriguing electrical differentials across their skins, were so light that the engineers may as well have been naked.

She put the kettle on to boil. Perhaps a cup of tea would ease her mind and help her focus. She had to get through this book, at least, and choose one of da Valmadrera's inventions or ideas for further study. She didn't really want to choose one of the obvious ones - the ambiguous and unknowable Dona Eliese, for example - but nothing was coming to her yet. Sitting at the table, tea cup steaming next to her, she opened the book again. She flipped to a random page and looked at the cunning arrangement of pipes and valves, clearly anticipating the work of Esme Marriot, and the Marriot-Boyle law for fluid pressures, in rough miniature. Vasilia traced one of the tiny engineers, admiring the neat, old-fashioned coils of her hair and veil, the sure manipulation of her hands. If di Valmadrera had just glimpsed, by instinct or imagination, the path of the future, Vasilia could admire that, even if she couldn't really understand, with the hindsight of the inevitable, how unexpected, how visionary, her work had been.

Vasilia thought longingly of the project she was actually hoping to work on. She was expecting a parcel from her collaborator any day, and it would be good to get back to work. If there was one thing she thought perhaps might have found a place in da Valmadrera's world, and the world of the Renaissance in general, it would be to find a way to make communication quicker. Still, engineers were working right now on ways to manipulate the features of cables of water and light, to allow information to be shared much more easily. She would welcome it, even as she agreed with the privacy concerns raised. 

Turning back to the introduction, she read the next section. _"The Renaissance saw a revival of interest in the classical arts of science and engineering, particularly the realm of the celestial, the interconnections of the geosphere and biosphere, and all the other traditional ways of knowing that had been forbidden and obscured by the controlling fears of the established church and its focus on understanding tiny fragments of knowledge and the individual arc of one's life, rather than the larger whole. These rediscovered classics flourished, with breakthroughs in astronomy, bioarchitecture, rheology and mathematics, alongside revolutions, in both technical expertise and subject matter, in the arts, and a new appreciation of humanity and our place in a universe characterised by synthesis and holistic understanding. Leandra da Valmadrera, writing at the very dawn of this universalist revolution, foresaw a world that we now take for granted."_


End file.
